A study has found that among adults living in Seoul, women are less satisfied with their marriages than are men.

The Seoul city government has placed on its homepage the results of a study titled “Hopeful Seoul Social Index” (희망 서울 생활지표). The study found that 73.4% of the male respondents were satisfied with their wives, but only 64.9% of wives were satisfied with their husbands.

The rate of spousal satisfaction was 8.5% higher for husbands than wives, while the dissatisfaction rate was 4.1% lower.

Also, 44.7% of husbands and 41.7% of wives said that “in our relationship we share values in how we live our lives.”

14.2% of husbands and 16.6% of wives said that they do not, however, showing at least a slight difference between husbands’ and wives’ perceptions.

Older couples were somewhat less likely to perceive that they share common values, and the gender gap in that perception increased.

The study was conducted as part of the Seoul Survey to collect data on how Seoul citizens feel about their lives.

The study was placed online at http://socialindex.seoul.go.kr on the 22nd.

Respondents were surveyed on 15 topics with 300 questions.

The international crimes division of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency has arrested six people from The Philippines, including 58-year old Mr. A, on charges of converting 16 billion won into US dollars and secretly moving the money overseas.

Mr. A and the others are accused of receiving the money from over 25,000 workers from The Philippines living in Korea starting in August of 2004, then converting the money into US dollars and smuggling it into The Philippines.

They would fill ramen packages with 50 $100 bills each, police said, and then passed through the X-ray inspection of the Customs Service and delivered the money to a currency exchange business in The Philippines.

Mr. A and the others made an illegal profit over 13.5 billion won this way, considering fees and exchange rate differences.

Police are searching for over 30 others yet to be caught.

Well, the Supreme Court has ruled that a prosecution based solely on such evidence cannot be brought. The article doesn’t say whether hair testing evidence will never be admitted, but seems to imply that that’s the case.

Original article in Korean is at this link.

The Supreme Court has ruled that estimating the length of time since a person used an illegal drug from the length of the person’s hair is baseless. Affirming a trial court decision, on the 21st the Court affirmed the dismissal of the indictment of 44-year-old Mr. K on charges of using pilophon [amphetamines].

The Court wrote that “against the defendant’s denials of the charges, the prosecution’s indictment proposes to use nothing but the results of testing his hair to estimate the time, place, and method by which he used the drugs… The estimate of ‘November of 2010′ includes an entire month, and as the trial court correctly saw, this makes it difficult to know the true circumstances of the drug use and thus to trust the indictment.”

The Court explained that “hair testing, which is meant to reveal the circumstances of drug use, is a method of estimating the length of time since drug use by taking advantage of changes due to external factors. However, it relies on the assumption that rates of growth are uniform, and with rates varying across individuals, as well as differences caused by the particular region from which the hair is taken and with medical factors, the test’s reliability is uncertain and this represents a serious problem.”

The trial court judge had written that “in the indictment the crime is said to have occurred in ‘November of 2010′ based on the results of a test of a 4 to 5 centimeter sample of the defendant’s hair which tested positive for pilopon, and the indictment goes on to estimate the length of time of the drug use and even the location, which it gives as [redacted city] [redacted district] and ‘under a Buddha Statue.’ It is difficult to see this as a sound basis for a criminal prosecution.” That ruling was affirmed by an intermediate trial court.

1. Since his daughter committed suicide, a father has held anti-bullying protests at her high school.

2. Television personality Goh Yeong-wook is accused of sexually assaulting a teenager and possibly two other women.

3. Allegations of a room salon visit in the gambling monks scandal were kinda-sorta denied.

4. An article on the allegations in the gambling monks case

5. An interview with the survivor of a school bus crash, who credits his seat belt for saving his life.

6. A girls’ high school in Incheon has come under fire for having biology students dissect stray dogs and cats, as well as rabbits.

7. An analysis of serious crimes committed on the Seoul subway.

8. One reporter wrote that the popularity and ease of availability make Korea a “Viagra heaven”.

9. The monk who revealed the gambling scandal was accused of attempted sexual assault of a female monk several years ago.

10. A look at some recent advances in counterfeiting the 50,000 won bill.

On the 25th of last month police arrested a 17-year old boy for setting fires in the trash heaps near his home in the Hwayang-dong neighborhood of Seoul and for throwing molotov cocktails at a middle school building. The boy has fair skin and blue eyes because he has a Korean father and Russian mother. Security camera footage shows him throwing the firebombs and cheering. When police asked him why he did it, he said that “when I look at the fires I feel good and my anger goes away.” The teen also said that “I am clearly Korean but to the people around me I am neither Korean nor Russian. I’m a half-breed.”

According to the results of the investigation released on the 15th, the boy’s father met his mother while he was studying abroad, and they then married. They soon had two sons. In 1996 the father was killed in a car accident in Moscow, and the mother left the home, leaving the two boys on their own. Their Korean grandparents, who ran a small shop, came and brought them to Korea.

For the brothers, life in Korea was difficult. Their appearance made them the target of ridicule by other children, who would say things such as “Hey, halfie!” and “Russians go back to Russia.” When the teen was in the second year of middle school he became extremely depressed and received psychiatric treatment for six months, after which he dropped out of school. During the next two years he would run away from home almost as regularly as he ate meals, but completed a school equivalency certification at his grandparents’ urging. Last year he entered high school.

He found school life as difficult as ever, however. He wound up rarely going to school. Two months after starting, he dropped out again. A teacher at the school who was in charge of student guidance said that “he almost never came to school, and he couldn’t seem to find anyone at school to be his friend.”

Last June his grandmather was killed in a car accident while looking for him after he had run away from home. He left again. He continued to get involved in fights and thefts.

His grandfather, standing next to him after he had been arrested for setting the fires, could hardly speak as he wept, police said. On the 11th the teen was indicted on several counts of arson. Prosecutors say he knowingly set fire to buildings in which people were sleeping. A member of the police said that “it looks as if his anger over the constant ostracism and bullying and guilt over the death of his grandmother led to the fires.”

In 2001 the Vens. Myeongjin and Jaseung, who is now the Order’s head, were accused of going to a Gangnam room salon named Sinbad (신밧드) to drink foreign alcohol and have sex.

Today the Ven. Jeongnyeom, the Order’s constitutional head, went on the same radio program to sort-of deny the allegations. He denied that the Ven. Jaseung engaged in prostitution that night, but didn’t deny that the monks spent the night in a room salon. Others who investigated the case at the time said that a full investigation never occurred.

Speaking with the MBC Radio program 손석희의 시선집중 on the 15th , the Ven. Seongho alleged that the Ven. Jaseung, the head of the Jogye Order, attempted to engage in prostitution and discussed other secrets of the Order.

That same day the Ven. Jaseung responded in a press release, asked prosecutors to indict the Ven. Seongho for defamation and also accused him of trying to sexually assault a female monk in 2004.

The Jogye Order published a document alleging that on December 25, 2004, the Ven. Seongho attempted to sexually assault the female monk in a temple, assaulted both her and her mother when they restrained him, and then fled. The monk’s mother spent the next six years in poor health and died, and the monk herself suffered injuries that included a ruptured small intestine as well as mental trauma, the Order said.

Also, the Ven. Seongho used funds from the Geumdang-sa temple to purchase an imported luxury automobile and caused injuries to temple employees. A court case over those allegations is underway.

The Ven. Jeongnyeom, the Order’s constitutional head, will appear on the same radio program on the 16th.

On the 15th the Ven. Seongho also said that prosecutors have already investigated him as the complaining witness, that he has “much more to say”, and that there will soon be a “war” between the two sides following the gambling rumors which began the whole affair.

A survey has found that eight in 10 teachers in Chungcheongnam-do say that their work duties negatively affect their lessons.

Ahead of Teacher’s Day, the Chungcheongnam-do branch of the Korean Teachers & Education Workers’ Union announced the results of its e-mail survey of 907 local teachers, conducted from the 24th through 31st of last night.

The teachers who participated  said that paperwork had increased from last year and said that miscellaneous duties related to paperwork, school evaluations, student guidance, and conflicts with managers made their jobs difficult.

A mere 0.3% said that their duties had been decreased following promises of such from the provincial office of education, while 20.7% said they “feel no decrease” and 77.1% actually said it “continued to increase the same as ever”.

Asked about the effectiveness of education on the “five practices of moral people” (바른품성 5운동), 6.5% called it effective while 73.1% said it was not helpful.

Also, 68.8% said that the standardization of high schools has been mostly good, with 11.1% calling it at least 70% good.

83% said that they prepare their students for the nationl school standards evaluation, and 89.4% said that the multiple homeroom teacher system does not work well.

The report concludes with a list of changes most teachers would like to see implemented by the provincial office of education.

1. Faced with his wife’s diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, an 83-year old man in Busan cut her respirator so that she could die. He was arrested soon after.

2. A woman went a bit nuts on the subway and wound up walking around nude.

3. A thief lured in a man with promises of being able to purchase some cheap gifts for Children’s Day, then robbed him and stabbed him, leaving him in critical condition.

4. The story I translated earlier this week on the origins of the gambling monks scandal.

5. A look at the coming generation of smart TVs.

6. A guy pretending to be singer Kwon Ji-yeong (G-Dragon) of Big Bang was arrested on charges of beating up and robbing a student.

7. One family decided to celebrate Parents’ Day with a familial knife fight.

8. A particular bar was busted for hiring women to pretend to be interested in male customers and get them to spend more on drinks than they realized.

9. Nine people died in an apartment fire in Busan.

10. A group of teenage boys were arrested for trying to skip out on their bill at a bar where they had been drinking soju.

In the Koreana Hotel in Seoul on the 1st, director Min Baek-du unveiled his new documentary 48m about the path that North Korean refugees must travel on their way to freedom.

48m is inspired by the issue of North Korean refugee being forcibly repatriated by China, a problem that has gained worldwide attention, and is named for the greatest width of the Amnok River.

The film contains portions of interviews with more than 100 North Koreans who crossed the river, which forms the border between China and North Korea.

Produced in cooperation with Fighters for Free North Korea (북한자유연합) and individual refugees, the film features appearances by actors Park Hyo-ju and Lee Jin-hui, Kim Kwang-hyeon, Ahn Sae-ho, Ju Min-ha, Kim Yong-jin, FFNK spokswoman Susan Scholte, and other members of refugee groups.

Ms. Scholte said that “we hope that many people will watch the movie and learn about human rights in North Korea and the problems faced by refugees … we plan to continue working until the day when there is freedom and respect for human rights in North Korea.”

At the press conference Ms. Scholte was followd by Jo Myeong-cheol, who recently won office as a member of the New Frontier Party; Park  Sang-hak, representative of FFNK; Kim Il-ju, chairman of the North Korean Research Foundation (북한이탈주민지원재단); Hong Sun-gyeong, chairman of the Committee for the Democratization of North Korea (북한민주화위원회); director Min Baek-du; and other who appear in the film.

Jo Myeong-cheol said that “I believe that the most important thing for me to do in the National Assembly is a law on Nrth Korean human rights.”

Amid the furor over a video showing monks from the Jogye Order, the nation’s largest order of Buddhist monks, engaging in gambling, there is growing lament over internal strife in the Order.

According to statements of Order members on the 10th, the incident in which eight of the Order’s monks were caught gambling by police has set off major discord between the Venerable Seong-ho, the former head of Geumdang-sa temple in Jinan, and the current leadership of the Order. In 2010 the Ven. Seong-ho was defrocked by communication of the order for causing trouble in the major temples of the national leadership of the Ven. Ja-seung, the current head of the Order and a former candidate to be the next head. In response, the Ven. Seong-ho filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement. The trial was held in August of last year.

Afterwards, the Ven. Seong-ho continued to bring complaints against the Order’s leadership, and in November of last year began holding one-man demonstrations in front of the Jogye-sa temple and accused the Ven. Jaseung of lacking ethics. During this time the gambling incidents occurred as well as allegations of assault.

A member of the Order said that “it appears that the Ven. Seong-ho released information on the video of the monk gambling to the media in order to cause trouble.” Another member said that “the gamblers were all members of a particular clique within Baegyang-sa temple… the filming was carried out because of a dispute within the temple.” That would mean that someone had to have placed the camera in the hotel room. In fact, Baegyang-sa temple’s former head, the Ven. Su-san, had been in a dispute with the new head.

The Ven. Seong-ho said in an interview with The Hankyoreh that “I happened to find a USB stick that had been left in front of a statue of Buddha at a temple… I went to prosecutors because I realized it was an opportunity, which had to be taken, to expose the bad acts of certain monks, including gambling.”

According to the complaint he sent to prosecutors in Seoul, eight monks spent 13 hours drinking, smoking, and gambling on poker at a hotel suite in Jangseong, Jeollanam-do, from 8 pm to 9 am on April 23. The monks had come to the city to attend the last funeral rites for the Ven. Su-san, the former head of Baegyang-sa. One of the monks in the video is a member of the Order’s Executive Committee. Because of his high rank he cannot be punished without the approval of the Committee. On the 5th he resigned, citing private reasons.

A high-ranking member of the Order told The Hankyoreh that “six monks have taken responsibility for their wrongful actions by resigning… however, the Ven. Seong-ho is continuing to cause unnecesary trouble with his six baseless lawsuits against the head of the Order.” Other monks made statements harshly criticizing the monks who gambled, but some also called for punishment of whomever made the video.

With the recent murder cases in Suwon and Yeongdeungpo involving Chinese-Koreans, worries over serious crimes by foreigners are increasing.

In fact, statistics show that the number of crimes by resident foreigners has been steadily increasing, and some are saying there is an urgent need for new measures.

According to police, in 2004 there were more than 9,100 cases of crimes by foreigners, which tripled to 27,000 criminals in the eight years since.

For example, rape went from over 50 persons in 2004 to 308 in 2011, a 600% increase. In 2004 there were 60 foreigners who committed murder, and 103 in 2011.

Assaults went from 3,300 persons in 2007 to 7,800 last year, a 230% increase in five years. In terms of nationality of offenders, China, America, and Southeast Asia saw sharp increases.

Crimes by Chinese people went from 8,400 persons in 2007 to 26,000 in 2011, nearly doubling. These crimes constituted more than half of all crimes by foreigners in each year, showing the serious level they are at.

A large number of the crimes by Chinese are committed by Chinese-Koreans. A member of the National Police Agency said that “the majority of crimes by Chinese are committed by Chinese-Koreans, who make up 70 percent of the resident Chinese population.”

The number of crimes by Americans went from 140 persons in 2007 to 1,700 in 2011, showing a trend towards significant increase.

Crimes by Vietnamese citizens went from 571 cases in 2007 to 2,400 cases in 2011, a 400% increase, as crimes by Southeast Asians increased quickly as well.

The increase in crimes by foreigners appears to be influenced by the rise in resident foreigners. There were 1.06 million resident foreigners in 2007, which increased 30% to 1.39 million last year.

However, crimes by foreigners cannot be explained solely by an increase in the number of resident foreigners. Many believe that crimes committed by Chinese or Vietnamese citizens are often due to how they are discriminated against compared to citizens of developed countries such as America.

Kim Hae-seong, a pastor with a Chinese-Korean church, said that “Chinese-Koreans are all excluded from the social safety net, so they cannot understand the Korean system,” and said the problem is that when they face obstacles and difficulties they have little recourse to any social safety net to help them.

He emphasized that discrimination against foreigners must change in order to prevent crime and improve the social safety net.

The number of resident Chinese citizens increased roughly 30 percent since 2007 to reach 503,427, while the number of crimes increased approximately 86 percent.

When the killer in the Suwon case was revealed to be Chinese-Korean, Twitter and other messaging forums exploded with vulgar criticisms of crimes by foreigners and Chinese-Koreans in particular.

Social Metrics analyzed that 3,500 Twitter posts on the murder from the 1st through 9th of April, finding that two days after the crime the increase in disapproval of Chinese-Koreans began.

Through April 5th there had been 67 such posts on Twitter, but on the 6th that shot up to 1,786.

One Chinese-Korean person we met in Daelim-dong said that “when I go back to China I will tell everyone how bad Korean people are,” and complained of being depressed by the public perception of him.

Experts say that individual crimes should not be generalized into a group problem.

Jeon Sang-jin, professor of sociology at Sogang University, said that “we have to be cautious in explaining these crimes as the result of social perceptions of foreigners.”

A fundamental policy, experts believe, must seek a system change in society rather than focus on short-term punishments.

Lee Yun-ho, professor of police studies at Dongkuk University, said that “the primary need is to establish a social policy that protects all foreigners, including Chinese-Koreans, and put them psychologically at ease.”

It is not known whether there will be an appeal.

On the 30th of last month three students at the international language and culture education center at university S in Seoul disappeared, including 19-year old Mr. A from China.

The school went the lodgings of Mr. A and the others, but the room was already empty. According to the school’s statement on May 7th, the students, who had arrived on C-3 visas, had in the end been under stress related to entering the school and had told the school they would withdraw. The school has made a final report to the Immigration Service (출입국관리소) that the students are now unregistered.

The C-3 visa allows residence for up to 90 days and is issued locally. Mr. A and the others met with the head of the school on the 30th of last month and paid 1.4 million won each for Korean language lessons for three months.

An official with the school said that “with time remaining on their ability to stay in the country they may be intending to take jobs, and we believe this must be investigated further.”

Last September the Ministry of Science, Education, and Technology (교육과학기술부), after concerns were raised regarding lax oversight of the increasing number of foreign students causing damage to the image of Korean universities, announced a program to improve that oversight.

According to the Immigration Service, as of March 19,178 foreigners were resident for purposes of studying Korean, with approximately 25%, or 4,758, staying illegally.

1. A photo of students who dumped part of their school lunch onto the floor made the rounds of internet message boards.

2. Police say that there is nothing to substantiate rumors of gangsters and kidnappers in the Gangdong-gu area of Seoul.

3. Many workers apparently feel uneasy with Labor Day’s historical communist assocations.

4. After arguing through a chatroom on KakaoTalk, a university student and two high school students decided to settle the argument by fighting in a public park. The high school students apparently stabbed the university student over 40 times, killing him.

5. More on #4.

6. An article on changing perceptions in the Korean music world of classical guitar.

7. The Seoul Shinmun took a look at gay bathhouse culture in Seoul.

8. A female police officer is protesting in Daegu against a local prosecutor’s alleged abusive language towards a fellow officer. The English Dong-A has a piece on this that includes a review of the “one-person demonstration” that gets so many headlines in recent years.

9. An article on Saturday school programs for elementary school kids.

10. Perhaps upset by the coming of Teacher’s Day, a group of female middle school students attacked a teacher and beat her until she passed out.

Netizens called the driver 악마 비스토 for the type of car, following the nickname for the other case, 악마 에쿠스. Soon someone claiming to be the driver poured fuel on the fire by leaving a comment saying “it’s my dog, I can train it how I want, what do you care?” and police began investigating.

As it turned out, the actual driver was a 64-year-old man who has trouble walking because of a heart condition, and brought the dog out in this fashion only because it is able to run fast but gets carsick easily. Using this method he travels only up to 400 meters at a speed the dog can handle. And the man doesn’t even know how to use the Internet, so he couldn’t have left that inflammatory comment.

However, the Daegu Office of Education put out the statement that “this student was at the top her class and appears to have chosen suicide for personal reasons… it is completely unconnected to school violence.”

1. A Chosun-jok (Chinese-Korean) man is accused of stabbing a convenience store worker. This story’s popularity is in keeping with the recent unfortunate media trend.

2. A high school student was injured after being struck by a car driving on the school exercise grounds. The video captured by the car’s “block box” aroused  netizen ire.

3. A man who had fled murder charges and lived on an island for a while turned himself in after becoming desperately hungry and cold.

4. More on #1.

5. There was much outrage after a man accidentally (he says) dragged a dog to death behind his Equus car, and will apparently face no charges.

6. A man who built a tiny home out of panels from shipping containers came home one day to find it completely gone.

7. An article about the last living grandchild of the royal family

8. A man is accused of secretly photographing more than 300 women’s bottoms at a bus station in Seoul.

9. You may or may not be surprised to learn that not all hagwon bus drivers should really be hagwon bus drivers.

10. Police had to help out an elderly woman after she tossed her 100,000,000-won life savings into a junk shop.

Similarly, following the brutal rape-murder of a young woman in Suwon by Oh Won-chun, an ethnic Korean but a member of the outsider Chosun-jok from China, the media are now paying more attention to crimes by Chosun-jok both large and small. Today’s example is a man accused of stabbing a convenience store employee; the first sentence reads “A Chosun-jok has been caught by police after stabbing a female convenience store employee in the forehead.”